An operating system (OS) is a set of programs that manage computer resources and provide common services for application software in a computer. The OS allows many different types of applications to operate on the same computer. To provide this functionality, the OS includes many different parts that interact to provide services to the applications. Accordingly, as applications and hardware change, the different parts of the OS are updated to ensure that the OS can provide the correct services to the new applications and/or hardware.
To update the operating system, a configuration file is used to identify update files and the location of the update files. The configuration file is hard coded with the specific names and locations of the update files. However, the location of the update files often changes after the configuration file is created. When the location changes, a subsequent update fails because the computer performing the update is unable to determine the location of the update files. This difficulty is even more pronounced in a situation when updating many computers with many different configuration files. Accordingly, updating a computer based on a configuration file with hard coded source location information results in many difficulties.